Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine eBook

with only a single candle in his possession, and no
matches. A drop of water from the roof put the
candle out, and all his efforts to return by the way
he came were futile. Meanwhile, his parishioners,
hunting high and low for their cure, chanced
to see his soutane, where he had left it, hanging
to a bush at the entrance of the Grotte de Robinet,
and when they rescued him, there was very little left
of his passion for studying nature underground.

The most wonderful and the most beautiful object in
the cavern is to be seen in the vast hall, which is
the last of the series. This hall has a dome-shaped
roof that rises to the height of about sixty feet,
and it is supported in the centre, with every appearance
of an architectural motive, by a single slender column
that seems to have been carved with consummate skill
out of alabaster. No image that I can think of
conveys the picture of this exquisite stalagmite so
justly as that of a column formed of the blossoms of
lilies, each cup resting within another.

Having left Marcillac, I passed under the mediaeval
village of Sauliac, built high up on a shelf of naked
rock, and then reached Cabrerets, which lies two or
three miles above the junction of the Cele and the
Lot. The village is at the foot of towering limestone
cliffs, and many of the houses are built against the
gray and yellow stone. The most interesting structure,
however, is the castellated one that clings to the
face of the rock far above all inhabited dwellings.
It goes by the name of the Chateau du Diable, and it
is the most considerable of all the rock-fortresses
in the valleys of the Cele and the Lot which are attributed
to the English companies. It possesses towers
and embattlements, and it was evidently intended to
defend the defile from any force advancing from the
wider valley. Here, doubtless, many a desperate
struggle occurred before the companies were dispersed
and English influence was finally overcome in these
wilds of the Quercy. At a little distance from
it, the long iron of a mediaeval arrow, having fastened
its head in a cleft of the rock, remained sticking
there for centuries, and was only recently removed.
The Prefect of the Department took a fancy to it, and
had not the good judgment to leave it where it had
so long been an object of curiosity. There, resting
in the place where the arm of the archer had cast it,
it told a story of the old wars, and set the imagination
working; but in a collection of local antiquities
it is as dumb and almost as worthless as any other
piece of old iron.